


Secret Reader

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Books, Gen, M/M, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 06:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: I am told that Neil Gaiman has, in some public forum, conceded that Crowley does read--is a "secret reader."This is a relief--it seems both more in keeping with the demon who "prefers the funny ones," and coins phrases elegant enough for Shakespeare to thieve, and whose apparent literacy in thought, word, and deed reek of someone who's cracked a book on occasion.This is me, trying to create a Crowley who's reasonably consistent as both a secret reader, and someone who's still distinctly different from Aziraphale, who's a true bibliophile.





	Secret Reader

“It’s not mine. I don’t read books.”

Well…

The truth was he did read books. Six thousand years and nothing to read? Even Crowley had to admit that was a formula for madness. He had to say it, though. First, just because it shocked Aziraphale, and he did so love to shock Aziraphale. Second—well, it wasn’t his book, after all. Third?

He was not about to encourage Aziraphale to think of him as a reader. Not with that mathom of a bookstore lurking in the wings just waiting to cram dog-eared, yellowing books down his throat. Six millennia with nothing to read? Madness. Six millennia with Aziraphale saying, “Oh, what about this? It’s a little known first edition of Sapristi Twee, who developed a fascinating seven-level system of thematic layering meaning similar to the work Joyce did in Finnegan’s Wake, but less accessible. You just have to read it…even I found it next to impenetrable!”

Yeah-nope. Not happening. Not now, not never.

The truth was, he preferred performance arts. The more performance the better. He’d take a play over a novel, a circus over a play, and a stand-up comedian over a circus. He’d take jazz over a symphony, rock over jazz, and a crazy busker in a Tube station creating something insane with a violin, a beat box, and a pedal drum over rock.

Yeah. That. Give him something alive. Shakespeare’s comedies over his histories, and his histories over his tragedies.

Give him Homer—the original Homer, Blind Homer singing his insanely kick-arse songs beside some Etruscan lordling’s hearth over all the published versions of the Illiad ever printed.

Hand him a printed copy of Omar Khayyam and he’d drive the Bentley the long way out of the way to drop it in a library donation box. Give him a nice fainting couch, a little electric fire, a cup of tea, and Angel reading Khayyam out loud?

Now, that was his idea of “reading.”

Angel read like, well, an angel. He was fluent, expressive, engaged with the text, passionate about the meaning, willing to take his time. You could close your eyes and be there. The only thing that might, perhaps, have ever been better was that tiny, perfect, golden age when humans had invented radio, but not yet got around to the telly.

He’d loved that age. He’d never told Aziraphale, but he’d go scurrying home from his various wiles and wickedness to hear Berwick Green usher in an evening starting with The Archers. He loved them all. The comedies. The dramas. The soaps. The kiddie shows. The big bands.

Oh, Go..Sat…Someone. Someone be blessed.

Really. He hoped someone was blessed for that tiny, precious, wonderful period, when he’d turn on the radio and turn off the lights and listen. Even Aziraphale couldn’t match it—the luxury of it. A banquet of beauty, spread out for all the world to enjoy for the cost of a second-hand crystal set bought for a song at a WI fundraiser. A wealth of art Emperors would bow down to.

He’d dance in the dark, alone, to Paul Fenoulhet and the Skyrockets, or the Oscar Rabin band. Or listen to the big band imports from America. String of Pearls! He’d spin in the dark, until he was giddy, until it was like flying…

Books. Books? What in books could match that wild enchantment? What could match hearing Dylan Thomas’s “Under Milkwood” performed live, driving in the Bentley at night, the motorway a gleaming miracle unrolling ahead of him?

He read books. Usually after he’d heard a reading, or after Aziraphale had told him about them in painstaking detail, so that when he opened them up the sound of Angel’s voice, the wild delight of Angel’s passion illuminated them like ink and paint illuminated the Book of Kells, turning plain crabbed letters into beauty-beauty-beauty. Only a few did he bother to keep. After all, if he needed a book, it gave him an excuse to go ask Angel, and an excuse to go ask Angel often meant that instead of reading alone, he’d be dining in company, laughing, teasing, sharing the mad world they’d both been stationed on all these many years, with no one to share it with but each other.

Humans just never did get the in-jokes. Even if you explained it to them. Angel got it. He had the eternal framework, the outsider’s context, the Celestial vision to understand that believing in your body was like believing in a pork chop: it was just meat. Hardly something to identify yourself with. He got that killing each other for land you’d never even visit, much less enjoy or love, much less for land you’d only have for at best a Biblical three-score-and-ten or so, was ludicrous. That children were precious because they were ephemeral—and that wealth was worthless for exactly the same reason. That a good meal with a good friend was a treasure to last until the stars burned out…

The books he has? A copy of the Bible, because sometimes on bad nights he feels obliged to go prowling through trying to find some clue why She seems to have abandoned this world to insane apes, and left them to it. Why Heaven and Hell are both so much more horrible than Earth. Reasons—sometimes he wishes there were just a few more concrete reasons. He’s long since given up on actually finding them between the covers of the Book. But, still…especially during the lead up to the Armageddon that Wasn’t, he felt compelled to look. And look again.

A big fat copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, because he could almost hear those words, the poet-words, in his mind. Not as good as sitting in the dark, by the hearth of an Etruscan King, listening to Blind Homer sing about the wine-dark sea. Not as good as tricking Angel into reading it out loud for him. But—yeah. There was music there.

A copy of The Secret Garden. He’d picked it up for a laugh, and kept it because the stupid, sentimental, toxic piece of Victorian crap always, always, always made him cry. Not that he’d tell anyone. Not even Aziraphale.

Well. Maybe, someday, Aziraphale.

Maybe.

A copy of “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak—a book he’d bought for Warlock, and kept for himself. The current copy was close to worn out. He should buy a new copy soon.

More important were the books he gave away—some to the world, in the hopes they might change the world. The funny books—the Pratchett and the Wodehouse and the Thurber and Shakespeare’s comedies. The kind books: the odd, peaceful books where people were good to each other, and children were rescued, and women were safe, and men were free to hug each other and walk arm in arm without fear of being beaten up by a bunch of skinhead yobs.

Then there were the ones he gave Aziraphale. “This one,” he had said, shoving “A Winter’s Tale” into the angel’s hands. “You’ll love the words, Angel.” And then he’d tricked his silly Angel into reading it, and he’d closed his eyes, and he’d lain on the swooning couch, and he’d been carried away at the end by the white horse, back to the time before, when Heaven was safe and God loved him.

In the end, though, no. Books belonged to Angel. Angel loved them, in spite of all their dry, wordy, obscure, endless silence. Tombs waiting for the stone to roll away and release the life hidden inside.

He’d prefer the gaudy, the loud, the brilliant, the biting sting of life, and of performance. The movie houses full of popcorn and necking lovers. The rock and roll. The raves. The festivals. The break dancers on the sidewalks. The boogie-woogie. And, yes—the bebop. And the eternal Queen playing on the Bentley.

But, still…

Angel knew. Angel guessed. There were still the silent nights, and the long winters, and the nights when he wasn’t quite ready to sleep, when he’d pick up a book and give it a go. These days as often as not it was something downloaded to his smart phone. (Which made it so much easier to hide.) But, still, he read.

That was him. A secret reader.

After all—six thousand years was a very long time to go without opening a good book. Even for Crowley…


End file.
